Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind listener mail. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and we've got a lot of great listener
Speaker 1: mail to get into today. I say, we jumped right in.
Speaker 1: Are you ready, Rob, Let's do it? Okay. This first
Speaker 1: message comes to us from Mark. This is about the
Speaker 1: chemical and religious transformation of the essences of foods. I
Speaker 1: think this goes back to our episode from the past
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving where we talked about some of the strange science
Speaker 1: and religious beliefs about gravy, and so Mark says, Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed the show. I've listened to just about
Speaker 1: every episode since I got into it several years ago.
Speaker 1: You and stuff you should Know are kind of the
Speaker 1: core of my podcast listening. Anyways, This is in reference
Speaker 1: to your Thanksgiving smorge Board episode, specifically the section on gravy.
Speaker 1: I listened to it not long after it came out,
Speaker 1: and this email has been brewing for a while in
Speaker 1: my head. Finally got it out in it, Joe, I
Speaker 1: think mused about gravy and the transformation of food from
Speaker 1: one thing to another in a spiritual sense. There is
Speaker 1: such a thing today in Judaism. You may be aware
Speaker 1: of cash root, the Jewish dietary practice. The one rule
Speaker 1: that most people know about it is you don't mix
Speaker 1: meat with milk. Now, this doesn't only mean cheeseburgers. It
Speaker 1: means at the same meal, if you're having steak, you
Speaker 1: can't have butter or sour cream on your baked potato.
Speaker 1: It means having different pans to cook dairy dishes and
Speaker 1: meat dishes in, and, depending on one's level of observance,
Speaker 1: not eating one within six hours of each other. Like
Speaker 1: if you have that milk chocolate for an afternoon snack,
Speaker 1: kiss the steak dinner goodbye. But what happens if something
Speaker 1: spills in the fridge. If you get some meat juice
Speaker 1: in a bowl of milk, the milk is now tray ff.
Speaker 1: This is t r e y f or non kosher. However,
Speaker 1: if you got to drop of milk in a bowl
Speaker 1: of beef chili, it may still be fined to eat,
Speaker 1: as meat is considered a greater contaminant. Look at it
Speaker 1: like mixing paint. A drop of white in a puddle
Speaker 1: of black paint will make no appreciable difference, but a
Speaker 1: drop of black paint in a puddle of white will
Speaker 1: have a drastic effect. Cheese made with rennet obtained from
Speaker 1: cow stomachs, thus considered meat is an ongoing debate. Here's
Speaker 1: the important part. In relation to the transformation of food gelatin,
Speaker 1: there is a principle called davar hadash. The H is
Speaker 1: the flim hawking back of the throat. Sound not like
Speaker 1: c H and cheese. So I hope, I said that right?
Speaker 1: Dvar hadash in cash root that holds what that When
Speaker 1: a substance has been through certain chemical transformations or deluded
Speaker 1: to a certain point, it loses its status as meat
Speaker 1: or milk. Food gelatin is the most common example. This
Speaker 1: is one reason why some jello type desserts and marshmallows
Speaker 1: are considered kosher and some are not. Just like one's
Speaker 1: individual practice, the specifics are up for debate from rabbi
Speaker 1: to rabbi, and tradition to tradition. Gelatine being rendered from
Speaker 1: animal bones should be meat. However, in the process of
Speaker 1: being made into gelatine, it undergoes certain processes that are
Speaker 1: considered enough to strip it of its meat status and
Speaker 1: make it ParvE, which means neutral, neither meat nor milk.
Speaker 1: Some rabbis hold this, some don't. Marshmallows are usually made
Speaker 1: with gelatine, and I suppose there might be some kosher
Speaker 1: ones that are, but most kosher marshmallows are made with eisenloss,
Speaker 1: a gelatine like extract from fish guts. Fish are usually
Speaker 1: considered parvey. That's a whole other rabbinic discussion, so anything
Speaker 1: derived from them shares that quality. There are some other
Speaker 1: factories that play into gelatine's kosher or not status, but
Speaker 1: dvar hadash is the one that's most relevant here. So
Speaker 1: it may not be exactly the distillation of bear essence.
Speaker 1: Remember the episode we're talking about bear gravy. Uh what
Speaker 1: the idea of changing of food's essential qualities through a
Speaker 1: cooking process is alive and well, and Judaism and probably
Speaker 1: other cultures with dietary restrictions today, keep on with your
Speaker 1: bad selves, Mark, And then, as a PS, Mark says,
Speaker 1: I just remember the liver. Liver cannot be sold in
Speaker 1: a kosher form, so homes that keep kosher will often
Speaker 1: have a tray pan just to boil the liver. The
Speaker 1: process cashiers or kosher's I think this is Cashier's Cashiers
Speaker 1: the liver and makes it ready to be made into
Speaker 1: your classic deli chopped liver spread. Interesting. I didn't know
Speaker 1: much about all of that. That's that's that's that's very fascinating. Yeah.
Speaker 1: By the way, you can get vegan marshmallows. I know
Speaker 1: that because those that's what we get here at the house.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I know in some recipes, Um,
Speaker 1: there are substitutes for for when gelatine would often be used,
Speaker 1: and say, certain types of baking or cooking where you
Speaker 1: can substitute something like pecton, which is a plant product
Speaker 1: for gelatin sometimes, but it might not work in all cases,
Speaker 1: So I don't if anybody does that with marshmallows. All right,
Speaker 1: here's another one. This one comes to us from Karina,
Speaker 1: and Karina writes, Hello, I'd like to start this message
Speaker 1: with some praise. Your show has been my favorite for years,
Speaker 1: and I appreciate how you approach even the more unconventional
Speaker 1: topics with a scientific mindset and a little lightheartedness. Keep
Speaker 1: up the great work, and please do keep up weird
Speaker 1: how cinema and the artifact too. The reason I finally
Speaker 1: decided to write in is however, the recent vault episode
Speaker 1: on Kama Muda. At first, I didn't think it was
Speaker 1: a particularly useful term, probably due to my avoiding team sports,
Speaker 1: religious groups, and even baby Yoda, who is indeed very cute.
Speaker 1: But then I kept pondering the concept of feeling a
Speaker 1: strong connection to strangers, and suddenly it struck me that
Speaker 1: it can be found in many a situation. For example,
Speaker 1: I'm a law student who had a major oral exam earlier.
Speaker 1: Today there are always three of us being questioned in
Speaker 1: turn these days, of with considerable physical space in between,
Speaker 1: and the prompts are notoriously anything but easy. So as
Speaker 1: I found myself rooting for the others, I started to
Speaker 1: wonder why yes while being tested and remembered Karma Mudah.
Speaker 1: Sometime later, I was relaxing by listening to my favorite
Speaker 1: band uh called Muse and not particularly popular in my
Speaker 1: neck of the global woods, while remembering a show of
Speaker 1: Theirs I attended in twenty nineteen, and there was that
Speaker 1: feeling again. Hearing some thousand other fans shout the very
Speaker 1: same words I otherwise sing by myself in the shower
Speaker 1: is the closest to a drug high. I will in
Speaker 1: all probability, uh ever have In short, since being made
Speaker 1: aware of this specific concept, I have begun to notice
Speaker 1: this sense of community practically everywhere, and for what it's worth,
Speaker 1: that is great. Quick side note, With German being my
Speaker 1: native tongue, I would not have expected that other languages
Speaker 1: lack for a word like schadenfreude, but it's a handy
Speaker 1: term that we use rather frequently. I experience a little
Speaker 1: schadenfreud and myself right now for others who can't. Just kidding,
Speaker 1: but I do think that having a specific name for
Speaker 1: a feeling makes it somehow less intangible. Best wishes from
Speaker 1: far away Austria, Korea. That's really interesting, And that gets
Speaker 1: into something that I think we talked about in some
Speaker 1: other listener mail after the Kamma Muda episode that while
Speaker 1: there I think are pretty good arguments against certain types
Speaker 1: of linguistic determinism ideas in psychology, it seems, at least
Speaker 1: in my experience, pretty undeniable that having a word for
Speaker 1: something can change how you experience the world. That like,
Speaker 1: there might be a thing that you never noticed until
Speaker 1: you had a word for it, and then once you've
Speaker 1: got a word for it, you see it all over
Speaker 1: the place on the subject of Muse. When I was
Speaker 1: I was in a band in high school that tried
Speaker 1: to cover a song by Muse. I don't exactly remember
Speaker 1: the name of the song. I remember that I was
Speaker 1: supposed to be singing it and I was not doing
Speaker 1: a good job. My main connection to muses that I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed the French horror movie High Tension when it
Speaker 1: came out, and with two thousand three, which is a
Speaker 1: really entertaining horror film to watch through once, but it
Speaker 1: prominently features the mus song Newborn and uh, it really
Speaker 1: effectively utilizes it. So I always associate news with that movie,
Speaker 1: in that movie, with that particular news track. Nice Okay.
Speaker 1: This next message is a response to a previous listener mail,
Speaker 1: which follows up on our episodes about spinning and dizziness.
Speaker 1: This is from Elizabeth. Elizabeth says, thanks for regularly blowing
Speaker 1: my mind. Guys, you're the best. Just listen to your
Speaker 1: responses to the listener mail nightmare Key episode and was
Speaker 1: intrigued by your comments on both Vertigo and YouTube videos
Speaker 1: in combination. You see some YouTube videos give me motion sickness,
Speaker 1: much as the early versions of Doom did. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just dated my of horribly, I know. Anyway, YouTube's worst
Speaker 1: offenders tend to be Minecraft videos. I wonder why that is,
Speaker 1: and if the affliction is widespread or just me. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not like my inner ear is moving around or anything.
Speaker 1: Thanks again, Elizabeth, Well, Elizabeth, I think there is an
Speaker 1: answer to this. So, first of all, the experience of
Speaker 1: general motion sickness symptoms including vertigo dizziness while people are
Speaker 1: using video games, which I think this would also include
Speaker 1: watching videos of game play in games that is common
Speaker 1: that is not just you. It seems to be especially
Speaker 1: common from what I can tell, in games that are
Speaker 1: played from a first person perspective as opposed to a
Speaker 1: third person perspective. And I think this would line up
Speaker 1: with both Minecraft and Doom if I'm not correct. I've
Speaker 1: never played Minecraft. That's first person, and I think you
Speaker 1: can switch it up. Okay, But anyway, there's actually a
Speaker 1: related phenomenon in pilot training known as simulator sickness. Rob.
Speaker 1: I know you you know a lot about airplanes. Have
Speaker 1: you ever heard of this before? Um, I'm not remembering anything,
Speaker 1: and simulator sickness off stuff in my head now. Well, Basically,
Speaker 1: the deal is that pilots who use stationary flight simulators
Speaker 1: to train sometimes experience vertigo, nausea, and other motion sickness
Speaker 1: effects even though they're not moving. One interesting finding about this,
Speaker 1: at least from what I recall, is that the more
Speaker 1: experienced a pilot is with actual flight, the more likely
Speaker 1: they are to experience simulator sickness in a virtual environment.
Speaker 1: But anyway, what explains this feeling of vertigo? You know, like,
Speaker 1: what what would get you feeling this way just from
Speaker 1: interacting with video content if your body is not even
Speaker 1: moving around? Well, I think there are multiple hypothesized explanations,
Speaker 1: but the main one that I would put out there
Speaker 1: would be sensory incongruity, basically disagreement between the senses. So
Speaker 1: when your vestibular organs are telling you one thing about
Speaker 1: your movement, such as you are sitting still, and your
Speaker 1: vision is telling you something different you are moving around,
Speaker 1: this can make you feel dizzy because they're not in agreement.
Speaker 1: It's that lack of agreement that leads to some types
Speaker 1: of dizziness in in other scenarios um and so this
Speaker 1: seems to be one reason that sometimes you can kind
Speaker 1: of reduce dizziness from spinning by closing your eyes right.
Speaker 1: But anyway, because of this, I would guess I don't
Speaker 1: know this for sure, but it would be my suspicion
Speaker 1: that video games and simulators the ones that are most
Speaker 1: likely to cause dizziness are the ones that are best
Speaker 1: at confusing the brain into thinking that it is just
Speaker 1: real vision of a real environment. So I think it
Speaker 1: would be especially bad with virtual reality, but even if
Speaker 1: you're just looking at a flat two D display, I
Speaker 1: think it would probably be the most intense with video
Speaker 1: games that include first person perspectives of watching first person operations,
Speaker 1: including the hands or controls or like a gun even
Speaker 1: in a first person shooter, in front of the body,
Speaker 1: and especially that would involve looking around a lot. I've
Speaker 1: also found that if you hand the controller off to
Speaker 1: a small child and let them just roar the row
Speaker 1: around in circles, that can that can cause a dizzying effect. Um.
Speaker 1: I've also found that if I pick up a controller
Speaker 1: that someone else is using and and and they have
Speaker 1: not inverted the y axis, then that can make me
Speaker 1: feel a little dizzy, like maybe maybe it's just because
Speaker 1: you know things aren't moving the way they're supposed to,
Speaker 1: and it just feels kind of disordient. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's not full on dizziness, but it it feels
Speaker 1: a little sickening somehow. Yeah, I know what you're talking
Speaker 1: about there. I'm interested in this fact that it seems
Speaker 1: like pilots who have more experience in real airplanes are
Speaker 1: more prone to this experience in simulators. It makes me
Speaker 1: think that Elizabeth Uh was dizzy by playing the original
Speaker 1: Doom because she had all of this experience blasting demons
Speaker 1: on Mars real life, she'd actually been on Phobos fighting
Speaker 1: off the Horde from Hell. Exactly were you there, Elizabeth?
Speaker 1: You gotta tell us, all right, here's another one for us.
Speaker 1: This is Uh. This comes to us from Nick, and
Speaker 1: it's regarding sinkholes. Nick writes, I spend my morning commute
Speaker 1: listening to your podcast, as I always do, during your
Speaker 1: discussion of sinkholes and how they have led to discoveries
Speaker 1: about remains, such as the diet of the giant sloth.
Speaker 1: I know it did not have much to do with
Speaker 1: the topic, but I actually think a future discussion about
Speaker 1: animals like the giant sloth would be really entertaining. Um
Speaker 1: I would agree with that, uh. Nick continues, I'm a
Speaker 1: young engineer. But what free time I have I spend
Speaker 1: in the outdoors appreciating the world's natural beauty. And on
Speaker 1: a recent trip to Joshua Tree, I learned all about
Speaker 1: how giant sloths of that area had a diet that
Speaker 1: largely consisted of Joshua tree fruits, and that the demise
Speaker 1: of the giant swath led to the demise of the
Speaker 1: Joshua tree, and vice versa, as one may presume. As
Speaker 1: giant sloths began to die out, less seeds were dispersed
Speaker 1: by the sloths, leading to less territory occupied by the
Speaker 1: Joshua trees, leading to less territory for the sloths who
Speaker 1: relied on the trees fruit, etcetera, etcetera. I know this
Speaker 1: may be a bit parochial, but honestly, what is more
Speaker 1: majestic than the idea of a giant sloth. The fact
Speaker 1: that this animal ever existed has always intrigued me, and
Speaker 1: I feel it is not talked about enough, so maybe
Speaker 1: it would be something fun to look at. Anyway. I
Speaker 1: love your podcast. I listened daily, and as a true fan,
Speaker 1: I tell people all the time not to trust squirrels.
Speaker 1: All the best, Nick Boy, it's the giants loth is
Speaker 1: not talked about enough. It's like there's a conspiracy of
Speaker 1: silence about the giants loth. Well, I mean, I I
Speaker 1: see where they're coming from, because, yeah, the giant sloth
Speaker 1: is this huge, fascinating creature, and sometimes there's a tendency
Speaker 1: maybe to focus on other prehistoric animals. Um. I frequently
Speaker 1: have this conversation with my son, because he's very vocal
Speaker 1: about this. He's like, the t rex is not my
Speaker 1: favorite dinosaur, Dad, because too many, too much attention goes
Speaker 1: to the t rex. There are all these other cool
Speaker 1: dinosaurs that deserve credit. And so I like along those
Speaker 1: same lines. Yeah, so like he was into the spinosaurus
Speaker 1: before it was cool, Yeah that sort of thing. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: there's just so many cool creatures and it's easy to
Speaker 1: focus on other prehistar creatures. But the giant sloth is
Speaker 1: is really neat and I mean and also here here
Speaker 1: in our neck of the woods, like it's one we
Speaker 1: can point to. It's saying like, yeah, there's the giant
Speaker 1: slot that that lived here. Actually, the more that I
Speaker 1: think about this, this is a great idea. We should
Speaker 1: do our best to inculcate an extinct mega fauna. Counterculture.
Speaker 1: That's all about people celebrating the virtues of lesser appreciated
Speaker 1: extinct to giant animals. Yeah, well, um, I would love
Speaker 1: to discuss the giant sloth in the future. I enjoy
Speaker 1: our prehistar creature episodes and yeah, we'll have to We'll
Speaker 1: have to do another one soon. I figured there'd be
Speaker 1: a lot of room from Moa in there. But anyway, uh,
Speaker 1: this uh, this next message comes from the exact same
Speaker 1: listener from Nick. Uh. It's a follow up to our
Speaker 1: episode about bonsai trees. And this is a kind of
Speaker 1: message I love getting from somebody who has been listening
Speaker 1: to the show for a while and then suddenly we
Speaker 1: just stumble across their area of x pertise. So anyway,
Speaker 1: Nick says, good morning. I just listened to your episode
Speaker 1: on bonsai trees and I wanted to reach out in
Speaker 1: regards to the study you guys brought up about semi
Speaker 1: dwarf trees and the possible benefits for their use in
Speaker 1: pulping processes, partially because this is the first topic I
Speaker 1: have some sort of expertise in. I am a paper
Speaker 1: science engineer and a chemical engineer, so I have some
Speaker 1: experience in the science of tree fibers. When you brought
Speaker 1: up the impact on reaction woods, my mind started racing. Essentially,
Speaker 1: trees are made up of three major components, cellulose, hemi, cellulose,
Speaker 1: and lignant. The percentage makeup varies from tree to tree
Speaker 1: and species to species, but in general a good assumption
Speaker 1: is about fifty percent cellulose, hemi, cellulose and lignant. UH.
Speaker 1: In papermaking, we really only care about cellulose. That's the
Speaker 1: part that we can use. Again, generally speaking, while lignan
Speaker 1: is what you might call our arch nemesis, lignant acts
Speaker 1: like the glue that holds everything together and is an
Speaker 1: extremely complex chemical. Theoretically, there could be cases where the
Speaker 1: entire lignant content of the tree is all one connected molecule.
Speaker 1: Absolutely astonishing to me. Wow, and I had no idea
Speaker 1: of that, Nick, that's crazy. But anyway, coming back to
Speaker 1: the subject of reaction woods, Nick writes, reaction woods are
Speaker 1: most easily explained by a branch, though, as you mentioned, slopes,
Speaker 1: wind and other harsh weather can also cause reaction woods
Speaker 1: to form. To use the branch example above, the branch
Speaker 1: will build up pockets of tension would in order to
Speaker 1: pull the branch up while uh, and here Nick says
Speaker 1: above what I think Nick min below. So I'm gonna say, well,
Speaker 1: below the branch there will develop compression would to push
Speaker 1: the branch up. The tension woods will have a higher
Speaker 1: proportion of cellulose, say six, while the compression woods build
Speaker 1: up more lignant content. One might assume that this means
Speaker 1: the tension would is per furred by paper market, since
Speaker 1: we like cellulose, But this assumption is wrong. Though I
Speaker 1: do hate compression would because of its lignant I love
Speaker 1: this hate for wood um the can The inconsistency that
Speaker 1: arises from reaction would makes the pulping process hard to
Speaker 1: control and actually decreases the overall quality and or yield
Speaker 1: of the pulp, which in turn makes the paper produced
Speaker 1: that much worse. This is why the study you mentioned
Speaker 1: that could reduce reaction woods caught me off guard. It
Speaker 1: seems like such an easy solution with such massive impact. Anyway,
Speaker 1: if you ever do an episode on papermaking, because it
Speaker 1: honestly is an incredibly complex and at least to me,
Speaker 1: deeply interesting topic, I'll be listening intently. I know there
Speaker 1: aren't many paper scientists walking around out there, but once
Speaker 1: you get one of us going about paper. We could
Speaker 1: talk for hours. Love your show. Listen every morning and
Speaker 1: afternoon during my commute. Thanks nick Ah, that's awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: get some I got to get some paper science, uh
Speaker 1: input from our listeners here. And you know, I don't
Speaker 1: think we've done a full episode on like the invention
Speaker 1: of paper and all it. It came up in an
Speaker 1: invention episode, but I can't remember what it was. I
Speaker 1: think we did one on the book that was about
Speaker 1: the history where we talked about like overall book technology
Speaker 1: scroll versus codax, and so we talked about some like
Speaker 1: types of papermaking. We talked about parchment and about papyrus
Speaker 1: making and all that. But yeah, modern paper based on
Speaker 1: wood cellulo, so that would be interesting. Yeah yeah, um,
Speaker 1: you know, speaking of paper making and books. This is
Speaker 1: one of the things I enjoyed about the the more
Speaker 1: recent TV adaptation of the Name of the Roads is
Speaker 1: that there are a few scenes where you see the
Speaker 1: monks making parchment, making the paper for the books. Interesting.
Speaker 1: All right, let's let's get into some of that weird
Speaker 1: house cinema listener mail here. Now, this first bit that
Speaker 1: comes to us, this was actually left on um a
Speaker 1: post at my blog side Samuta Music s E m
Speaker 1: U t A m U S. I see. Uh, clearly
Speaker 1: I wasn't thinking about something that that translated well to
Speaker 1: to delivering on the podcast when I when I established
Speaker 1: that side. But I blog about the Weirdout Cinema episodes
Speaker 1: there and we had a listener respond we're not entirely
Speaker 1: sure what their name is or what their name they
Speaker 1: want to go by, so we're just gonna skip the
Speaker 1: name and say a A listener wrote in and they
Speaker 1: were responding to our episode on the Oily Maniac. Uh,
Speaker 1: so this is what they say. Nice job. You've covered
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting info about this Shaw Brothers flick.
Speaker 1: As a fan of Chinese and Hong Kong cinema, I
Speaker 1: have watched a couple of hundred of the Shaw Martial Arts,
Speaker 1: horror and comedy films. The Oily Maniac is definitely one
Speaker 1: of the lesser productions from the Shop Brothers, but it
Speaker 1: still has its moments. Those interested in more Shop Brothers
Speaker 1: black magic films should check out the work of director
Speaker 1: to whom Key such as Hex eight, Hex Versus Witchcraft eighty,
Speaker 1: The Gross Out Pick, Corpse Mania nineteen eight one, Hex
Speaker 1: after Hex two and the wacky The Boxers omen three,
Speaker 1: but my favorite has got to be hex Lies in Videotape.
Speaker 1: Oh that would be good. Um Uh, you know I've
Speaker 1: heard of The Boxers omen That one's been on my
Speaker 1: radar for a while, but I've never actually seen it.
Speaker 1: But I know it's supposed to be a weird one.
Speaker 1: Um anyway, they continue. Um. He also directed one of
Speaker 1: the all time best Shop Brothers dramatic martial arts arts films,
Speaker 1: Killer Constable, which deserves to be better known and is
Speaker 1: currently available free to view with an Amazon Prime subscription.
Speaker 1: Killer Constable. I'll have to look it up. There are
Speaker 1: also two more films in the black magic horror genre
Speaker 1: by Ming Ho Ho, the director of The Oily Maniac.
Speaker 1: They start ty Lung and are appropriately named black Magic
Speaker 1: Nive and Black Magic two nine six. Note all of
Speaker 1: the films I mentioned contains subject matter that can be objectionable,
Speaker 1: nausea inducing and just playing wrong and times. I believe
Speaker 1: forward to more great weird House cinema podcast. So clearly
Speaker 1: there's a lot of great um Shaw Brothers and Hong
Speaker 1: Kong cinema black magic content out there. If we if
Speaker 1: we're brave enough for it in the future totally. Uh So,
Speaker 1: I think we've got to come back to the Shaw
Speaker 1: Brothers someday. Maybe maybe we can find one that's a
Speaker 1: little less grimy but still just as weird. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think I think I have one kind of
Speaker 1: in my sight, so I gotta I gotta research it
Speaker 1: a little bit more, but we may have one that
Speaker 1: will get to eventually. Oh boy, that's exciting. I can't wait. Okay,
Speaker 1: uh we got a couple of messages. But this is
Speaker 1: another thing I just love when we can be like, hey,
Speaker 1: did anybody grow up in the Soviet Union that can
Speaker 1: explain all this stuff we don't understand and teens in
Speaker 1: the universe, And oh boy, we just got some really
Speaker 1: great messages from I think these were both Russian listeners,
Speaker 1: or at least listeners who had Russian family. Um. So,
Speaker 1: a couple of messages about teens in the universe, the
Speaker 1: first one from Slava, providing some interesting cultural and historical
Speaker 1: context for this nineteen seventy four Soviet science fiction movie.
Speaker 1: Slava says, Hi, guys, I'll try to keep this short
Speaker 1: because I feel like I tend to ramble. The apparent
Speaker 1: paradox in teens in the universe, which seemed to stump
Speaker 1: the robots, is actually a riddle for kids. Remember this
Speaker 1: was the A and B sitting on a rose thing
Speaker 1: that we didn't understand. I mean, it was clear they
Speaker 1: were using it to short circuit the robots brains, but
Speaker 1: but I did not know what the original thing was.
Speaker 1: So Slava says in Russian, the word for and is
Speaker 1: just the letter in in the cyrilla. This is like
Speaker 1: a backwards in which Slava says is pronounced like the
Speaker 1: English letter E, which I will use as it stand
Speaker 1: in to hopefully make things less confusing. The wording of
Speaker 1: the riddle therefore becomes ambiguous. It can be read as
Speaker 1: as A and B are sitting on the wall, or
Speaker 1: as A E B are sitting on the wall. So
Speaker 1: when asked what's left sitting on the wall after A
Speaker 1: falls down and B falls down, the correct answer would
Speaker 1: be the letter E. My guess is that all the
Speaker 1: robots are too mathematically minded to understand the nuance of
Speaker 1: human word play. I see, okay, So the issue is
Speaker 1: that the conjunction that the sound in spoken Russian, indicating
Speaker 1: the conjunction for and could also just be a word
Speaker 1: in a list of things that are sitting on the wall.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense? Yes? Yeah, yeah, this this uh,
Speaker 1: this email definitely UM explained it a bit more like
Speaker 1: you know, like you said, we from the context of
Speaker 1: the film, you can tell it's some sort of a uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a logic puzzle type situation. I think maybe
Speaker 1: an English equivalent would be, uh, I'm about to say
Speaker 1: some letters for you, memorize them, M and O. What
Speaker 1: were the letters? Was it? Did I say M and
Speaker 1: oh or m n oh? Oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Slava goes on to say, also, those gymnast rings you
Speaker 1: mentioned that, remember they were in Pavel's memory of his
Speaker 1: childhood home. Those gymnast rings you mentioned were a common
Speaker 1: occurrence in households with children. The Soviet Union led quite
Speaker 1: an ambitious propaganda campaign espousing the virtues of exercise. As
Speaker 1: for the hobby of collecting nails, this also was Pavel's hobby.
Speaker 1: You remember you have these giant land nails. Hobby of
Speaker 1: collecting nails. I am at a loss. I'll probe the
Speaker 1: members of my family who grew up in the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union to see if I can figure anything out. Keep
Speaker 1: up the great work I've enjoyed your show for years,
Speaker 1: whether at work or as a sleep aid. Uh. The
Speaker 1: recent edition of Weird House Cinema has been quite a
Speaker 1: treat slava. Well, we're glad you're enjoying its lava and uh.
Speaker 1: And and we don't resent that some people use our
Speaker 1: show to to go to sleep. We've heard that plenty
Speaker 1: of times before. Yeah. No, I mean, however, if you're
Speaker 1: using the show, um, go for it. How whatever use
Speaker 1: we can we can can be all right. This one
Speaker 1: comes to us from Georgia. Hello Robert, Hello Joe. This
Speaker 1: is Georgia from St. Petersburg, Russia. I've been listening to
Speaker 1: your podcast for over a year now, mostly to your
Speaker 1: Invention series, which I really enjoy. I must admit that
Speaker 1: I almost overlooked your teams in the Universe episode, as
Speaker 1: I normally skipped the Weird House Cinema episodes. Sorry, too
Speaker 1: much weird Soviet movies on my list to watch. I
Speaker 1: just cannot possibly afford adding anything more to that. They continue.
Speaker 1: But while my podcast app was marking it as listened to,
Speaker 1: the description caught my eye with the keywords that, as
Speaker 1: a rule make me alert Soviet and nineteen seventies. You see,
Speaker 1: I'm no fan of sci fi and no expert on that,
Speaker 1: including the Soviet sci fi. Moreover, when these two movies,
Speaker 1: as it turns out this was supposed to be one
Speaker 1: movie but judged too long and split into two came out,
Speaker 1: I was not even around, and yet, as someone born
Speaker 1: just before the breakup of the uss ARE, I'm drawn
Speaker 1: to that part of my country's history. Plus having my
Speaker 1: parents who can tell me quite a lot about it,
Speaker 1: I just couldn't pass by this discussion. The most curious
Speaker 1: thing for me was your decoding of the cultural codes. Uh,
Speaker 1: actually the way that you react to the quote unquote
Speaker 1: normal Soviet stuff in the movie, which might not seem
Speaker 1: weird to Russian viewers even all those years later. So
Speaker 1: let me share some thoughts with you. And don't get
Speaker 1: me wrong, I do understand that for an outsider, getting
Speaker 1: all the cultural codes in a Soviet movie right is
Speaker 1: a hard task. I can imagine how many of them
Speaker 1: would slip from my attention if I were watching, say,
Speaker 1: an old Chinese movie or something. I think we talked
Speaker 1: about this in the episode that like at least half
Speaker 1: of the weirdness in our reaction to this was probably
Speaker 1: actually just in us not understanding what some of these
Speaker 1: like cultural symbols were, And it's hard to know one
Speaker 1: thing from another, like do the gymnastis se So it
Speaker 1: seems like gymnast rings were just a common thing in
Speaker 1: Russian households that wasn't meaning anything in particular in the movie.
Speaker 1: But no, but he so far as said anything about
Speaker 1: Russian about nails nail collecting. I think that's just actually
Speaker 1: weird maybe yeah, yeah, And and like I said, it's
Speaker 1: it's always kind of an interesting um thought experiment or
Speaker 1: an interesting project for a movie viewer to sort of
Speaker 1: figure this out, whether you're watching something from a movie
Speaker 1: from another part of the world or even from another time.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes you have that a similar situation going
Speaker 1: on when you stay watching a film from the nineteen
Speaker 1: forties or something, and you're like, what what am I
Speaker 1: looking at? Was this just was this the technology of
Speaker 1: the day, was the current fad? Or is this just
Speaker 1: some genuine weirdness of this picture? Sausage man on the
Speaker 1: train with a dog in his basket and mad love? Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly alright, Georgia continues. I should also point out that
Speaker 1: although I had heard the title, I watched the movie
Speaker 1: only yesterday. Both parts together with my parents. At least
Speaker 1: one of them claims having watched both parts back in
Speaker 1: the seventies, but being fifteen or sixteen at the time,
Speaker 1: my parents just weren't interested in those quote unquote kids
Speaker 1: film movies anymore, they say, even for them back then,
Speaker 1: it seemed too slow and childish. Okay, I I appreciate
Speaker 1: that my tastes are too slow and childish for your parents,
Speaker 1: So let's start. The title itself is somewhat weird because
Speaker 1: oh trock that o t r okay um a boy
Speaker 1: in between being a child and a young man is
Speaker 1: a pretty old fashioned word, which you will normally find
Speaker 1: somewhere in either classic Russian literature c. Tolstoy's trilogy um
Speaker 1: uh debt that stavo childhood um and then um ultra
Speaker 1: chest Fox boyhood, uh uhnst youth and some moralistic literature. Here,
Speaker 1: I guess it is used for the effect to make
Speaker 1: it sound like a high style sci fi title crimea
Speaker 1: used as a set in many Soviet and Russian movies,
Speaker 1: including Lilac Ball. It's actually a kind of sequel to
Speaker 1: other famous sci fi team movie uh Guests from the
Speaker 1: Future and weird stuff such as Asa, a merge of
Speaker 1: a crime story, a love story and row music now
Speaker 1: and then the Georgia discusses the Soviet King of acting,
Speaker 1: you know, Kenty Smutnovski. And then they this is their
Speaker 1: their words, not mine, They say, God, that's a hard
Speaker 1: one to pronounce. I can imagine. It's a very much
Speaker 1: is a very much loved actor. Not necessarily a king, though,
Speaker 1: but definitely a very good one, particularly in that sixty
Speaker 1: four hamlet you mentioned. His performance is worth all the
Speaker 1: oscars in the world. Not kidding, well, I should look
Speaker 1: that up. Actually, yeah. His title in Russian is ioo,
Speaker 1: a kind of play of words because i O is
Speaker 1: a common abbreviation for acting, literally executing someone else's responsibilities.
Speaker 1: Plus they added an extra for special so the move
Speaker 1: in the movie he's executing special responsibilities, the meaning of
Speaker 1: acting in lieu of disappears Love. Durov the Academic is
Speaker 1: also a very famous Soviet actor, well known to kids,
Speaker 1: also for his roles in kids movies. For a Weird
Speaker 1: One the Story of Voyages. Oh boy, this one has
Speaker 1: a good poster. You should look this up right now. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's like a man's face on the back of a
Speaker 1: shroud or a cape or on the front of a cape,
Speaker 1: also known as a fairy tale of wanderings. Interesting. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if weird, how cinema may just get like
Speaker 1: a Soviet takeover of Soviet genre films from the seventies.
Speaker 1: Will will sort of be all we do for a bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll come back to him for sure. Uh.
Speaker 1: They continue Barregavoy as a consultant for both films. I
Speaker 1: wasn't able to find any details of his trip to
Speaker 1: the USA, but probably I just didn't put much effort
Speaker 1: into my research. By the way, according to Wikipedia, he
Speaker 1: was shot at during an official meeting with cosmonauts in
Speaker 1: the Kremlin because of his resemblance with Bresnev, who is
Speaker 1: in a similar looking car often referred to as a
Speaker 1: Sheldon Sheldon of Oz or member carrier, member of the party,
Speaker 1: and then uh. The characters mentioned a law a nickname
Speaker 1: meaning forehead but also a shortened version of his surname,
Speaker 1: sneaks into the spaceship because no one wanted to take
Speaker 1: him on board in the first part. Ah, he was
Speaker 1: a stowaway. He was very much into reading sci fi
Speaker 1: and can be seen holding I robot in Russian and
Speaker 1: some compilation of sci fi stories in the first part,
Speaker 1: hence his knowledge of all sorts of things from those books,
Speaker 1: including the dragonfly uh Strekova Coscacoza classification. In Russian. He
Speaker 1: talks about stre strechozoids or dragonfly OIDs, apparently a sort
Speaker 1: of knowledge he got from so many sci fi stories. Okay,
Speaker 1: so when they're saying Lob has expertise on alien civilizations,
Speaker 1: what that means is he's read a lot of Isaac Asimov.
Speaker 1: There you go, all right, Misha. He recites Tolstoy at
Speaker 1: heart because of his special ability to memorize many pages
Speaker 1: of print for which he was selected for this mission
Speaker 1: in the first part, and then Pavel. His parents celebrate
Speaker 1: his birthday in a dim lit kitchen just for the
Speaker 1: sake of the candles on his on the birthday cake.
Speaker 1: We usually turn the light off uh for that moment
Speaker 1: when the kid blows all the candles out. Also, his
Speaker 1: gymnastics kit in the hall of his apartment was quite
Speaker 1: common stuff in a Soviet family with kids. It's called
Speaker 1: uh shedskaya stinka Swedish wall. We still have some leftovers
Speaker 1: from it in my apartment. When celebrating his birthday. On
Speaker 1: board of the spaceship, the children chant happy birthday altogether
Speaker 1: in a typical way, certainly not menacing. We usually do
Speaker 1: that when we want to wish happy birthday to someone altogether. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry I read a menacing tone into the birthday shout.
Speaker 1: I think that was probably just me not being familiar
Speaker 1: with that chant. Okay. Picking up with a few more
Speaker 1: things here, Georgia says that all of the kids were
Speaker 1: equipped with a smeezlu love vitel um. In the first
Speaker 1: part of the movie. They have it on their chest
Speaker 1: and this is the translator box. You remember that before
Speaker 1: so it was translating the whistles and the gestures of
Speaker 1: the robots so that they could speak. But apparently they
Speaker 1: used this in the first half in Moscow Cassiopeia, and
Speaker 1: it allows them to translate the words of aliens or
Speaker 1: even animals. Uh. That some kind of Google Translate type machine,
Speaker 1: Georgia says. Now, you remember the press conference scene where
Speaker 1: there is Biff Wayned, You remember him with the the
Speaker 1: yellow turtleneck and the cool leather jacket. Well, Georgia says
Speaker 1: the French journalist from peef Viante. That might be a
Speaker 1: translation of that might be through which we got the translation.
Speaker 1: Biff Wayuned also appears in the first part. Apparently he
Speaker 1: doesn't change even after twenty seven years have passed. He
Speaker 1: is also a sort of spy as he tries to
Speaker 1: make some shots with his mini camera in the first film.
Speaker 1: Huh uh. And then this part was interesting finally about
Speaker 1: the music that makes the humanoids go nuts. You remember
Speaker 1: the crazy scramble horns and the bass and the drums
Speaker 1: that were the sonic weapon that draw drove Agapit out
Speaker 1: of his mind. Um to my mind, it sounds like
Speaker 1: that sort of corrupting music from the capitalistic world you
Speaker 1: would hear in Soviet propaganda about the poisonous influence of
Speaker 1: the Western music or dance moves. It certainly does. And yes,
Speaker 1: I do think that apart from being an entertainment, the
Speaker 1: movie is definitely trying to get across its message about
Speaker 1: teens being our future, their role in bringing the society forward,
Speaker 1: about friendship, support, etcetera, etcetera. This message about the bad
Speaker 1: influence of the West on the youth was such a
Speaker 1: commonplace back then. It looks almost as organic in this
Speaker 1: film as the Red Square and the obligatory salute to
Speaker 1: Lennon's mausoleum. That the Pioneers a much more politicized group
Speaker 1: than your Scouts. By the way, that was the second
Speaker 1: step in the ideological education of a Soviet citizen, after
Speaker 1: Octia Briannoch derived from October for the very small children.
Speaker 1: Preceding the third. Uh comes some mulletz for the youth
Speaker 1: and eventually being a member of the part. Uh the
Speaker 1: and oh, sorry, this is a there's a big parenthetical
Speaker 1: in the middle of that sentence. So apparently the Pioneers
Speaker 1: in the first movie, Uh, they salute Lennon's mausoleum in
Speaker 1: in Russia before they depart for Alpha Cassiopeia. But anyway,
Speaker 1: Georgia wraps this up, saying I might have forgotten some
Speaker 1: of the points. It's getting too long. Anyway, I hope
Speaker 1: this email was not as boring as it looks. Keep
Speaker 1: on investigating into the Soviet realm of weird movies. We
Speaker 1: have so many of them, and even weirder than the
Speaker 1: one you've just seen best, Georgia, Uh, well, sounds promising. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm excited. Thank you for all of this context. This
Speaker 1: was deep. Yeah, yeah, this was this really answered a
Speaker 1: lot of questions and raise new questions, and and also
Speaker 1: presenting some new movies for us to check out. So
Speaker 1: I'm excited. Yeah, I definitely want to check out the
Speaker 1: Story of Voyages and that awesome one too. Yeah. Alright,
Speaker 1: let's wrap up with one last message here. This is UH,
Speaker 1: also about weird Cinema. This is from Brian. Brian says, Hey,
Speaker 1: Joe and Rob. I wanted to write in and say
Speaker 1: how much I've been enjoying Weird House cinema. Not to
Speaker 1: say I don't enjoy everything you do, because I do,
Speaker 1: but there's something fascinating to me about how you both
Speaker 1: explore and discuss these films. I haven't seen any of
Speaker 1: the films discussed so far, but somehow, after listening, it's
Speaker 1: like I've always loved them and feel a kind of nostalgia. Anyway,
Speaker 1: there were two films I wanted to throw out since
Speaker 1: I'm already emailing. Keep in mind I was born in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety and I am far from a film buff.
Speaker 1: First is the film Planet of the Dinosaurs. When I
Speaker 1: was a child, my grandmother had a VHS copy of
Speaker 1: this movie, and I have memories of watching it over
Speaker 1: and over. The intro music always gave me the creeps
Speaker 1: and the film overall terrified me, but I still liked it.
Speaker 1: After listening to a Weird House episode, I attempted watching
Speaker 1: it available on Prime and was pleased to see My
Speaker 1: six year old son was also terrified by the intro music,
Speaker 1: and my wife made me turn it off. Um, this
Speaker 1: to me feels like a house film, but you are
Speaker 1: the experts. Well, I looked it up and it looks
Speaker 1: very promising, Brian. It's got some very cheesy looking I
Speaker 1: think stop motion dinosaurs kind of had a slight remind
Speaker 1: slight similarity to The Daytime Ended, which is a movie
Speaker 1: we might have to get into someday. Yeah. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: this looks great Planet of the Dinosaurs. Brian goes on
Speaker 1: to say the second film I'm not sure fits quite
Speaker 1: as well, but I wanted to mention it anyway. And
Speaker 1: it is troll Hunter or troll Yagharon. This is a
Speaker 1: Norwegian film from two thousand ten and I love it. However,
Speaker 1: everyone I ever attempted to show it to hated it.
Speaker 1: Uh that that's the best kind of film to love,
Speaker 1: a film you can love alone. Long story short, It
Speaker 1: is filmed cam quarter style and they hunt massive trolls
Speaker 1: and get into some dangerous situations kind of scary, very fun.
Speaker 1: Ha ha, Brian, I have seen this movie and I
Speaker 1: will tell you I liked it, so maybe I I
Speaker 1: love Troll Hunter when it came out. Yeah, this one
Speaker 1: for if if anyone out there's not familiar with it,
Speaker 1: don't let the cam quarter style thing throw you, because
Speaker 1: I know a lot of us got kind of over
Speaker 1: the found footage sort of approach to filmmaking. Uh. Troll
Speaker 1: Hunters really great and it has so much wonderful monster
Speaker 1: science already just baked into the film itself, like they
Speaker 1: really thought out this whole troll thing and troll petrification. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a great flight. I highly recommend. Yeah. But finally,
Speaker 1: Brian says sorry for the long email, But lastly, I
Speaker 1: love you guys and all your work. I came across
Speaker 1: your podcast as well as stuff you should know three
Speaker 1: years ago while my daughter was in the hospital having
Speaker 1: corrective heart surgery. Needless to say, I needed some distraction
Speaker 1: at that time, and you helped provide it. Thanks so much, Brian. PS.
Speaker 1: My daughter is as normal as any other three year
Speaker 1: old these days and in great health. Uh and so
Speaker 1: I'm really happy to hear that, Brian, thanks for the note. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad that the guy that we could help
Speaker 1: you out in some small way through a hard time.
Speaker 1: I know what it's like being in the hospital with
Speaker 1: a kiddo. Uh So, uh yeah, that was good. That
Speaker 1: was a great one to hear. And now we have
Speaker 1: two other well at least one other movie. I don't
Speaker 1: know if Troll Hunter, I don't know. If it's it's
Speaker 1: weird cinema, weird house cinema might be too recent. Is
Speaker 1: that is that past our cutoff point? What do you think? Um?
Speaker 1: I don't know that it's too recent. I just feel
Speaker 1: like I don't know like it. It kind of like
Speaker 1: I couldn't really talk about the monster science of it
Speaker 1: because they do it so well in the film itself.
Speaker 1: You know. Um, I don't know, it's it's it's a
Speaker 1: weird it's a weird, like it's definitely a weird film.
Speaker 1: I just don't know, um, what we could say about
Speaker 1: it really other than it's good and people should see it.
Speaker 1: So I highly recommended. All right, Well we're gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and uh tell Carnie the mail bot that's gonna
Speaker 1: be it. For today, but hey, we'll be back next
Speaker 1: week with another round of listener mail. We'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from everyone out there about uh, you know, current
Speaker 1: recent episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, recent artifacts,
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Speaker 1: Or if you have a response to a particular listener
Speaker 1: mail that we've featured on listener Mail, that's open game
Speaker 1: as well. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio
Speaker 1: producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get
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